Scars
by Dawnlight-6
Summary: Tokaku contemplates Haru's scars. Post Episode 12. Now updated into a series of interconnected one-shots.
1. Scars

Author's Note:

This is my first _Akuma no Riddle_ fanfic. Ever since I watched this show I've been wanting to write something cute and slightly angsty exploring Haru and Tokaku's relationship and what might have happened after Episode 12.

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><p><strong>Scars<strong>

Azuma Tokaku is a failed assassin and she will be forever grateful for that fact. She knows now it is a path that would have consumed her as easily and completely as it did the rest of her family; she knows also it is a path she never would have questioned, never would have escaped from, if not for the pale skinned girl who lies sleeping beside her.

In the silver glimmer of moonlight stealing into the room, Tokaku studies her saviour, eyes wandering over bare skin that is normally hidden from her sight. Haru is sleeping on her back with her arms thrown out, looking sweetly innocent somehow, the sheet mostly pulled from her body by the action of Tokaku sitting up and gathering it about her own waist.

Tokaku knows Haru is self-conscious about her scars. When she is awake, she hides them, even from Tokaku, slipping seamlessly from bath towel to robe to clothes when she comes out of the shower, always changing into outfits that fully conceal.

Even during the times when Tokaku slides her fingers over Haru's naked skin, feeling the dips and ridges of her scars with the concern of a lover's caress, Haru sometimes pulls her hands away and places them elsewhere on her body, on the few unscarred places she has left.

It isn't fair of her to expect Tokaku not to take an interest in those scars; after all scars are one of the few areas of expertise that Tokaku has. Gliding her eyes over the battlefield of Haru's body that so many have tried and failed to conquer, Tokaku automatically notes details about the scars criss-crossing her skin; sorting the shallow from the severe, cataloguing the weapons responsible – knife, gun, sword, scissors, guessing healing time from least to longest. Tokaku knows all about the logistics of pain.

She wants to ask questions and learn the stories behind each and every one of those scars, but she doesn't because she knows Haru won't answer. Sometimes when Haru sleeps she shakes and cries out with the dreams tormenting her, and on those nights Tokaku holds her close, slitted eyes darting about the room searching for enemies she knows aren't there because they're in Haru's mind where Tokaku can't fight them.

When Tokaku asks the next morning what Haru was dreaming of, Haru only smiles her bright smile and says she doesn't remember. And then she will look outside their window, her face alight with happiness, and make some comment about how beautiful the day is, even if it's pouring with rain. After that, Tokaku can't bring herself to ask anymore, because she doesn't want to make Haru think of all the dark things in her life and see her joy fade.

And so, because of that, Tokaku still doesn't know how Haru got most of her scars, and maybe never will.

There is one scar Tokaku studies more closely than all the rest. She is unerringly drawn to it, both fascinated and repulsed, the newest and most recent addition to Haru's collection. A scar not faded like the others, still red and angry some days, still barely healed.

The scar that rests right over her heart.

The scar that Tokaku gave her.

Looking at it makes Tokaku half unknowingly stroke her own scar on the left palm of her hand, for it shares a common origin with Haru's scar.

Tokaku never doubted she could stop Haru's thrust. It just made it all too easy for her to justify her own desire to kill. The bite of the knife in her palm, her fingers embracing the cold steel of the blade and every burden that came with that.

The burden of success. The burden of knowing her own knife had not gone astray. The burden of living, knowing she had killed the one she loved.

Blood flowing between their bodies; the trickle from Tokaku's hand and the red tide from Haru's heart. The heart she had sworn to protect. The heart that was more precious to Tokaku than her own. The heart she had broken with the too-quick blade of her knife.

It had been Tokaku's first kill, her first real victory, the blooding that would truly earn her the fear that came with her name.

It had been ashes in her mouth and bitter tears and the desolation of the ending of her world.

But Haru's heart had been stronger than even Tokaku could have imagined. She had sworn right from the beginning she was going to live, and even an Azuma assassin couldn't stop her. She'd graduated the victor of Class Black and been granted her wish for a normal life. She was the only one of them who'd succeeded, despite Tokaku's conviction she'd fall at the first attempt made on her life.

Tokaku covers Haru's scar with her own and feels her heart beating, slow and steady in the night. Haru's heart is a mystery she still doesn't understand, a constant revelation of kindness and forgiveness that clashes with everything Tokaku had once known the word family to mean.

After learning Haru survived, Tokaku had gone to see her at the hospital fully expecting to be hated and intending nonetheless to beg for that which she no longer had a right to. Yet instead of the cold rejection she'd anticipated, Tokaku had been met with a kiss, their first real kiss, shared in the harshness of the hospital's fluorescent lights. Haru had pulled her down into it, cutting off Tokaku's stumbling apology, her lips dry and warm against Tokaku's own.

"Tokaku-san," she whispered. "I love you."

Tokaku hadn't found the courage to say it back to her until weeks later, when Haru was out of hospital, on a night neither of them were likely to forget.

Hesitating over the strangeness of those words on her lips, Tokaku had realised then it was the first time she'd ever said _I love you_ to anyone at all, and having the freedom to say it; having someone to say it to, changed her whole life in that moment.

She still hasn't said it more than a handful of times since, but maybe soon she will have said it enough that she'll lose track of the exact number of times. She's kind of looking forward to that day.

Haru stirs, heart fluttering beneath Tokaku's touch.

"Tokaku," she says sleepily, not quite awake. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Tokaku whispers, sliding back down beside her and returning half the stolen sheet.

Muttering, Haru shifts onto her side, pulling the sheet over her shoulder and giving Tokaku a brief sight of her back.

After lying still for a few moments, Tokaku inches closer and wraps her arm over Haru's waist, fingers searching until they rest lightly against the scar again, tracing its difficult geography beneath the shelter of the sheet shared between them.

Haru doesn't move away.


	2. Expulsion

**Expulsion**

Tokaku had stopped crying because her body had run out of tears. She'd never known that could happen, but it must do because eventually her tears had stopped even though her sobbing hadn't. Her dry eyes had burned then as her sobs went on unchecked, coming so fast she was almost choking; the harsh sound rending the air of this sunny room that was otherwise too quiet, too still.

How long that went on for she couldn't say. It was an endless Hell of inescapable pain and Haru being dead, of seeing her fall to the ground over and over, with Tokaku's knife in her chest. Finally she came back to herself enough to feel her eyelashes brushing the salt still crusted on her cheeks as she blinked. She realised, slowly, that her breathing was becoming more normal, that her sobs had followed the tears into oblivion. She was too exhausted for either anymore.

She lay curled up on Haru's bed, not her own, staring at her right hand covered in Haru's blood and the jagged red lightning strike cut into the palm of her left. Every now and then her hands still shook, warning tremors of sanity under siege. In a way, it was almost funny. She, who had always had such steady hands, lying here with fingers so limp she couldn't have held a pencil, let alone a knife.

Her phone was buzzing madly but she refused to look at it. She wanted no riddles today. No congratulations. No reminder of what she had just bound herself to forever by taking someone's life.

Tokaku knew that the staff here changed the sheets daily, but she still pretended she could smell Haru's scent, the dusty scent of sunlight, on the pillow pressed to her cheek. If she closed her eyes, she could nearly imagine she was folded into one of Haru's impulsive hugs, the ones that she used to grumble about but secretly long for as she watched her charge from the corner of her eye. Haru would no longer smell of the bright, sunny world though, if Tokaku could see her now. She'd smell of rotten death, just like the rest of them.

Looking back, Tokaku tried to pinpoint the exact moment when it had all gone wrong. When this situation had spiralled out of her control and she'd lost the indifference that had always been her greatest comfort; the impenetrable wall between her and the world. When protecting Haru had become more than a half conflicted sense of duty to keep her alive.

It was at the school festival. That was when it happened. What had Tokaku been doing, wandering around the stalls with her like they were just two girls together? She remembered how Haru had been ridiculously happy when Tokaku won some stupid cat ears for her in a dart throwing game, as if that was something that was hard for her; she'd been throwing knives for as long as she could walk. And then Haru had dangled snacks enticingly in front of her face and Tokaku's reflexes were too fast for her to pull away before she snatched them neatly with a snap of her teeth. Haru had laughed, delighted, and Tokaku had grinned back with her deadly assassin's smile while something strange and gentle she'd never felt before stirred in her chest.

It had almost been like a date. It was as close as Tokaku's life had ever gotten to normal. And nothing she'd done that day had been required by her self-appointed role as protector. Haru's life wasn't in danger when Tokaku was winning cat ears and eating snacks. She'd done those things purely to make Haru happy, because seeing Haru happy made her happy too.

If she'd had any sense Tokaku would have realised what was happening and killed Haru back then, before she got in any deeper. Before she fell any more in love with her.

There was a soft knock on the dorm room door. Tokaku didn't bother to move, not even when she heard the door open and footsteps began to draw closer to the bedroom. Since coming to this school she'd been slashed with knives, shot at, nearly stabbed in the eye, thrown out of a window, blown up, drowned, crushed by a chandelier and beaten multiple times but somehow none of those things had killed her. Assassins died every day; hers was not a profession with a long life expectancy. If someone had finally come to take Tokaku's life, they were welcome to it. The only thing she'd ever had to fight for was gone, destroyed by her own rotten hand.

"Azuma-san."

Tokaku barely glanced towards the chairperson. It hurt too much to look at her. She was too similar to Haru; the same chestnut hair and rose coloured eyes. Maybe she looked how Haru would have looked, had she ever gotten the chance to grow up. Except that the chairperson was cold, like ice, and she stank of dead things, and Haru had smelled of sunlight and happiness and been warm as a fire on a dark winter's night.

"If you've come about the reward again I'm going to fucking kill you," Tokaku said in a low, lethal voice, not caring what the consequences might be.

It wasn't an idle threat. God, how she wanted to kill this woman. Stick her full of blades and carve the beauty of her face into a horror better resembling what she truly was.

The chairperson smiled at her like she knew what Tokaku was thinking. "I'm afraid you won't be receiving any reward, Azuma-san."

"What do you mean?"

"I just got word from the hospital. Haru is going to live."

Tokaku vaulted upright on the bed, staring intently at the chairperson for any sign she was lying.

"How?" she whispered, not believing her yet still wanting to be seduced by the impossible fantasy she offered, anything to stem this awful flow of pain, if only for a few precious moments.

"An earlier attempt on her life left Haru with a rib of titanium. It made the edge of your knife stray from her heart, just a little. Just enough."

The chairperson delivered her message with unruffled poise, giving no hint as to what she thought about any of this; whether she was glad or not Haru had survived, whether she cared that Tokaku had just been saved from living in Hell.

"It might not matter to you, but Nio survived as well."

Nio. The chairperson was right. Tokaku didn't care whether Nio was alive or dead. There was no room inside of her for anything but Haru. Haru smiling, Haru laughing, Haru looking out at the world with her big, trusting eyes. Haru hating her, probably, but Tokaku could deal with that if it meant Haru got to live. They'd been in different worlds all along; Tokaku should have known she'd taint what they had with her dirty assassin's hands. She should be glad this had happened, sooner rather than later, so that Haru would realise what she was. So that she'd be able to escape.

"One final thing," the chairperson said when Tokaku made no answer.

"What?"

"Your assassination attempt failed. Under the rules of engagement, you are now expelled. Leave this school by the end of the day."

She turned and walked out of the room.

Leave, thought Tokaku. Leave and go where? Back to Academy 17? Unthinkable. Tokaku couldn't go anywhere that Haru wasn't. Even if Haru did hate her now, she was still going to protect her from whatever came next. At least her filthy hands would be good for something then.

The Azuma fortune. Didn't that exist somewhere, and wasn't Tokaku the heir to it? She'd never really thought about money before, never cared, but she'd make sure to stake her claim on that fortune now if it meant she could do what she wanted. If it meant she could stay near Haru and tell the world to go to Hell.

That afternoon, Tokaku left Myojo Academy for good and checked herself into a hotel right next door to Haru's hospital. She had no idea what else she was supposed to do, and for the first time in her life there was no one to tell her.


	3. Living Arrangements

**Living Arrangements**

A two bedroom apartment was apparently what passed for a normal life. This was the reward Haru had chosen for surviving fifteen years of Hell. Tokaku moved in while Haru was still at the hospital, because it was a given they'd be living together after this. The apartment was close enough to Myojo Academy that Haru would easily be able to walk there once she was better. Tokaku would have objected to her going back to that school at all, but she knew it was what Haru had sworn to do and she'd come to know better than to think she could stop her.

One bedroom in the apartment was significantly bigger than the other. Tokaku took the bigger room not really thinking it through and only realised her mistake too late, on the day Haru finally came home, when she walked into what had previously been her room only and saw Haru's luggage piled in a corner and Haru herself sitting on the edge of that very large bed, looking at her with a soft smile that made Tokaku's heart ache.

"You're going to sleep in here?" she demanded, as if it was an entirely unreasonable thing for Haru to do.

Haru's eyes widened slightly. "Don't you want me to?"

Tokaku fisted her hands and gritted her teeth to stop a yes from slipping out. "Do what you like," she said gruffly, and went to find solace with her knives.

Sharpening her knives had always been something that steadied her; the reassuring _shickt, shickt_ of the blade along her favourite diamond whetstone telling her that with every stroke her knife was getting more lethal, more ready to rend her enemies' flesh.

When Haru joined her on the sofa though, Tokaku's hands began to shake and the knives laid out before her became foreign objects of horror, not the comforting friends she'd thought. The one she was sharpening dropped from her hands, landing with a dull thud on the floor. Tokaku recognised it as the one that had nearly killed Haru, but she didn't think Haru did.

"You should hate me," Tokaku whispered, not raising her eyes to look at the girl beside her.

Haru had always possessed an astonishing ability to tear through the Tokaku's reserve, blithely invading her personal space in a way that even other assassins didn't dare. She did it again now, taking Tokaku's knife hand and twining their fingers together like she never wanted to let go. "I love Tokaku-san."

"You shouldn't." Tokaku frowned, staring at their interlaced hands. "I'm…tainted."

"You're not tainted. You placed yourself between me and the blades of eleven assassins."

"Only to nearly kill you with my own. Or have you forgotten that? Forgotten about the advanced notice and the sword? Forgotten that I'd already sworn to kill you for betraying me?"

"No," said Haru quietly. "That was why I attacked you at the end. I intended to stay alive. Even if it meant harming you. I wasn't planning to go easy on you, Tokaku."

Tokaku laughed mirthlessly. "You were never any kind of physical threat. I knew you wouldn't be able to kill me. I just…I had to be sure." She looked up finally, meeting Haru's too forgiving eyes.

"And you found out what you wanted to know, right?" Haru said. "That you protected me of your own will. That your feelings for me weren't a lie."

Holding her jaw tight, Tokaku allowed herself a short, sharp nod.

Haru smiled and a bright shaft of sunlight pierced the darkness of Tokaku's heart. "Then I'm glad, because it means we can be together like this."

Tokaku had already been over this apartment a million times, checking for hidden cameras, bugs and any other surprises the denizens of Myojo Academy might have seen fit to leave behind. Had she not done that, she never would have had the courage to do what she did next; leaning over to capture Haru's smiling lips with her own in a kiss that was more possessive than she meant.

She felt Haru's free hand winding into the fabric of her shirt, felt the brush of breasts against her own and the strange sensation of another's body warming her. A faint moan came from somewhere but she couldn't say which of them it was.

"You," Tokaku allowed, drawing back to look at Haru with blue half-lidded eyes. "You can sleep in my room. Our room." She dropped her head to Haru's shoulder, a sigh escaping her that was part longing and part defeat as her arms encircled the other girl's waist. "I want you to."

Haru's reply was not much more than a murmur breathed into her ear. "I want to be with you too, Tokaku. I want us to be like family."

"Family never meant very nice things for me." Tokaku admitted this only grudgingly, seeing it as another mark against her, another reason for Haru to turn away.

The sun was beginning to set, and as she glanced up again Tokaku found her gaze caught in the burnished strands of Haru's hair. Hair that glowed like fire, blinding her, just as it had on the day when she and Haru met.

"Then let me show you what family should mean," Haru said, and kissed Tokaku again in the red glare of the sun's setting rays.


	4. Protector

A/N: Someone asked for the meeting at the hospital, so here it is...

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><p><strong>Protector<strong>

"That girl," the nurse said hysterically, "has just been sitting there for hours. And when I tried to make her leave, she pulled a knife on me. A _knife_! Can't you do something about her, Chairperson?"

Yuri Meichi glanced at the blue haired figure sitting stiffly by Ichinose Haru's bedside. "She has my permission to stay there if she wants to. It's fine."

"We can't have visitors waving weapons around in a hospital! It's not orderly!"

With a sigh, Yuri said, "Give me a moment. I'll talk to her." She approached the young assassin and looked down at her with some interest, noting that she'd finally washed her hands clean and had the left one bandaged.

"Azuma-san," she said smoothly. "Try to be a bit better behaved. You're scaring the nurses."

"Don't care," said Tokaku shortly, barely giving her a contemptuous glance.

"You really don't need to do this. Haru has survived her ordeal. No one will be coming after her anymore."

Tokaku frowned stubbornly, staring at Haru's unconscious form. "I'm not going to leave her."

"Oh? And do you think she'll even want to speak to you when she wakes up?"

Yuri had to give the girl credit. Despite how angry she must be, her hand barely twitched towards her knife. "I'm not at Myojo Academy right? So it's fine for me to be here."

"Suit yourself. Just don't threaten the hospital staff. They're the ones who saved Haru's life, after all."

"I won't threaten them if they don't tell me to leave."

"I've already told them you can stay. It's fine."

"Why?" Tokaku finally looked at her properly, brow crinkled in suspicion.

The Chairperson smiled. "I'm not a cruel person, Azuma-san. Whatever you might think."

Turning back to her charge, Tokaku said dismissively, "You stink of death."

"So do you," Yuri whispered as she left.

Alone, Tokaku sighed and clenched her jaw. "I know," she said quietly into the room. She briefly took Haru's hand but quickly let it go again. Her bloody assassin's hands would never be clean enough to touch Haru again.

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><p>Waking up was always the worst part. Swimming through a sea of fractured thoughts and waiting to remember the bit where everyone was dead. Having the knowledge crash down on her that she'd lost someone else, because Haru knew that if she was waking up alive in a hospital bed it meant that whoever she'd been with had given their life for hers.<p>

Waking up in a hospital bed meant waking up alone.

She woke up, and she was alone. Nothing but the harsh glare of florescent lights overhead, hurting her eyes.

"I did it," Haru sighed, and it felt like a hollow victory but she accepted it nonetheless. The bad feeling would pass; she knew. She'd recover her optimism. She'd keep smiling no matter what.

But she couldn't always, not in those first few moments after waking up in a hospital bed. That was too much to ask.

Haru looked up with a half-hopeful expression as she heard someone at her door, but it was only a dark haired nurse carrying a pair of fresh hospital pyjamas that she placed down by Haru's bedside.

"You're awake?" the nurse said, blinking at her in surprise. "That's much sooner than we expected."

"Mmm," said Haru, trying to clear her mind of its drug-induced fog.

It wasn't good, not having her wits about her. Hospitals could be dangerous places. Whilst in hospital, she couldn't hide and she couldn't run away. She couldn't risk befriending anyone knowing they might die. She couldn't trust that she wasn't surrounded by assassins. Then she remembered with a flood of relief that it was over; that she'd beaten the clan and won her freedom. No one was coming after her anymore.

Clenching her hands in the sheets, Haru allowed herself the luxury of a few thankful tears but no more. Seeing her sad was not what those who'd loved her would have wanted.

"Well anyway," the nurse prattled on, "at least that strange girl seems to have gone. She's not a friend of yours is she? She gave me the creeps."

"What…girl?" Haru asked.

"A blue haired girl with an unpleasant expression."

"Tokak…Tokaku?"

"I don't know what her name was. She's _not_ a friend of yours, is she? She looked like a bad sort of person to be around. Ah, is that the time already? I'd better get on with my rounds. Goodnight."

"The lights," said Haru weakly, but the nurse had already gone, leaving the door to Haru's room half-open.

Time, thought Haru. If the nurse knew the time, there must be a clock somewhere. She swivelled her head until she found it, hanging inconveniently on the wall behind her. It was four o'clock. In the morning, she guessed, since she could see a square of darkness outside the small, high-up window; the only one in the room.

It was important to be slow and methodical; to not rush putting her mind back together. To take thorough stock of her surroundings and the various aches and pains that plagued her. To remember she was glad to be alive. This was the ritual of sanity and survival that Haru had taught herself bit by painful bit over the years. The things that hurt too much to think about she had to wait until she was ready for, until she was sure she was strong enough to bear the strain.

Tokaku.

Stealthy as the assassin herself, thoughts of her were slipping past Haru's defences. Tokaku saving her in a thousand different ways. Tokaku abandoning her mission and never begrudging the consequences. Tokaku, warm in her arms despite the feral distrust always lurking in her eyes.

Tokaku had been here, but now she was gone.

Tokaku, who had suffered so much for Haru's sake, only to have Haru betray her and force her to dirty her hands with blood, right at the very end.

That probably meant Haru had lost Tokaku too.

She closed her lids against the unforgiving hospital lights, her chest hurting from something worse than the stab wound. Had Tokaku's actions all along only been because of what Haru had done to her? Had she cared when her knife went into Haru's chest? Had she cried? Was it awful that Haru wished on her the pain that meant her feelings hadn't been a lie?

Sensing more than hearing another movement at the door, Haru quickly snapped her eyes open just in time to catch sight of Tokaku's shocked face, blue eyes staring straight into hers, before she disappeared like a ghost.

"Tokaku-san! Tokaku-san! Come back!"

Haru meant to yell but it was more of a piteous plea.

She wasn't alone after all. God, if she could not be alone, just this one time…

Tokaku slouched back into the room with the utmost reluctance. Dragging footsteps brought her to Haru's bedside and she looked down at her with a too-stoic expression that did nothing to hide the torment in her eyes.

"H-Haru," she said, her voice less steady than when she'd stabbed her. "I'm sorry. I can't possibly ask you to forgive me—"

Haru had thought it when she'd raised her own knife against Tokaku, but she didn't have the luxury of saying it then. Nothing was going to stop her now. She grabbed Tokaku and pulled her down into a kiss, Tokaku's quick reflexes automatically making her brace her arms on either side of the bed so she didn't fall on top of the injured girl.

It wasn't much of a kiss, not much more than their lips touching, sweet and warm in the glare of hospital lights. But it meant everything. It meant that Haru wasn't alone. It meant she hadn't lost someone else who was precious to her.

"Takaku-san," Haru whispered, as soon as she let her go. "I love you."

She held Tokaku's eyes with her own, watching the blood rush into her cheeks, watching as her cool fearful gaze heated to blue fire.

"Haru…" Voice husky, Tokaku reached out a hand. She caught herself and stopped for a moment, hesitating, fighting some inner battle, before just touching gentle fingers to Haru's face. Looking at her all the time with the wondering expression of a sinner who'd been granted redemption beyond all hope of forgiveness.

"I thought I was alone," Haru said, leaning into that longed for caress. "When I wake up like this, I'm always alone…"

She didn't say the reason why. She didn't need to. One look at Tokaku's face confirmed that she understood it was because everyone was always dead.

"I just went to the washroom," said Tokaku, a crooked smile unexpectedly ghosting over her lips. "I wasn't leaving. I wouldn't leave you alone in a place like this."

Every ounce of softness vanished as she heard a movement behind them, and before Haru could stop her Tokaku had turned with a knife in her hand, glaring murderously at the poor nurse who'd been unfortunate enough to enter the room.

She was a different nurse to the one before, younger with ash coloured hair. She froze when she saw Tokaku's knife, eyes going large with fright.

Probably the fact that Tokaku suspected the nurse might have seen her with her defences down made her doubly dangerous right now. And on top of that she'd be overly anxious to try and make up for what she'd done; not a good thing when there were no real enemies to fight.

Haru tugged insistently at the back of Tokaku's shirt, the only part of her within reach. "Tokaku! Tokaku, it's fine. You don't need to do this anymore. You don't need to be my protector. All that is over now."

Making a sound of shock, Tokaku whirled to look at her, the old distrust creeping back into her eyes. "Then…Do you not need me here?"

Taking advantage of Tokaku's distraction, the nurse quietly backed up and fled the room. Tokaku barely paid her any attention.

"I didn't say that," said Haru, shaking her head.

Despite the kiss, despite Haru saying that she loved her, Tokaku was still having trouble working it out. Grabbing her hand and suppressing her own exasperation, Haru pulled her back over to the bed. "The danger is over now. That doesn't mean that _we're_ over. I just want you to stay with me. You don't need to do anything else. Having Tokaku-san here is enough."

Relief flashed over Tokaku's face before she frowned with her customary fierceness. "I won't stop being your protector."

"Eh?"

"Even if no one's coming after you, there's other things I can protect you from. Being lonely. Being sad. Being by yourself in the world. I…broke my promise not to hurt you, so I have a lot to make up for." Her grip tightened on Haru's hand, eyes still tentative as those of a wild thing. "Right?"

"I told you those who reflect on their sins will be forgiven," Haru reminded her with a smile. "I have things to make up for too. Not telling you the truth. Holding information back from you. Trying to hurt you to save myself. Let's both start again. Protecting each other."

Tokaku agreed with a nod, her expression half-crumpled with the effort of holding back tears.

A wave of exhaustion spilled over her and Haru sank further into her pillows. Her reserves of strength were almost gone for tonight.

"Tokaku – would you mind turning out the lights? They're hurting my eyes."

With a sound of assent, Tokaku rose from where she'd ended up sitting on the edge of Haru's bed and flicked the lights out, closing the half-open door while she was at it. The hospital staff wouldn't like that, but then, they probably didn't much like a knife-wielding protector beside their patient's bed either.

Haru sighed a little when Tokaku returned and availed herself of the chair by her bed.

"What?" said Tokaku.

"Nothing," Haru replied.

Perhaps half an hour passed, during which the ticking of the clock was the loudest sound in the room. Drifting in and out of sleep, Haru watched Tokaku sitting immovably in her chair, arms crossed, hair glinting like cold steel in the reflection of some far distant light outside the window.

She was careful not to react when Tokaku finally did move, keeping her breathing just the same, not even letting an eyelid twitch. As she'd half suspected, more than half hoped would happen, Tokaku joined her, abandoning her watch for Haru's bed, stealing in with all the furtiveness of her former profession.

Two damaged girls in a hospital bed, slowly beginning to heal.

Tokaku cried for a little while, barely making a sound, curled into Haru's side with an arm slung low over her hips. Haru would have comforted her, but she suspected that it was easier for Tokaku this way, easier to let go when she thought no one was awake to see.

Her scent, Haru thought, hadn't changed. She still smelled of the freshness of the forest.

She still smelled wild.

But most importantly, she was free.


	5. Bedtime Riddle

**Bedtime Riddle**

_(Set after Episode 7)_

Being an assassin meant being a light sleeper, amongst many other things. That was why Tokaku woke up immediately when she felt her sheets being pulled back, automatically reaching for her knife until she smelled sunlight and green meadows and sweet living things.

"Ichinose what are you doing?" she demanded, voice scratchy with irritation. Didn't this girl have any idea of how dangerous it was to sneak up on a sleeping assassin?

"Couldn't sleep," was all Haru said, getting into Tokaku's bed as if this was an entirely normal thing to do; despite the fact that she'd never done it before, despite the fact that Tokaku certainly hadn't invited her.

The insistent press of an unfamiliar body forced Tokaku to shift over and make room almost before she knew what she was doing. There was an awkward moment of knees and elbows clashing as they got comfortable, with Haru ending up close enough to wrap her arms around Tokaku's waist and steal half her pillow to boot.

Belatedly, she asked, "this is okay, right?"

Tokaku levelled an incredulous look at the apparently sleeping girl. Why bother asking once she'd already done it? She huffed, non-committal. Did sharing her bed on demand come under the remit of her role as protector? The longer this went on, the more difficulty Tokaku was having in keeping the boundary clear between being Haru's protector and being her…What? Ally? Friend?

Would Haru's scent make her ache like this if she was just a friend?

"It's fine," she said, accepting after some uncomfortable squirming that there was nowhere for her arms to go besides around the girl currently occupying every part of her normally inviolate personal space.

No part of this was fine; not in the least little bit. But if this was what Haru needed in order to sleep, Tokaku couldn't throw her out. A well-rested Haru was a Haru with sharper reflexes who was more likely to survive.

_And what if she does survive?_ Some part of her whispered. _What will happen then? Will she still be climbing into your bed, seeking solace in the arms of an assassin?_

It was a useless thought, and Tokaku pushed it away.

"Ichinose."

"What?"

"Today was close. Too close. You should prepare yourself for the fact that I might not make it next time."

"Takaku-san won't die."

"I might," said Tokaku. "We need to think about what your strategy will be if that happens."

"Haru doesn't want to think about things like that. It's too sad."

"Well, if I died for you, I'd be pissed off if you didn't survive after all, so listen!"

Haru's eyes snapped open in surprise and looked into hers. "Okay," she whispered, in a voice that was slightly unsteady.

Tokaku sighed. "If I…stop being around, you should stay with the teacher as much as possible. Bother him outside of class. The others aren't allowed to involve him; you should be safe as long as you're with him.

"At night, don't go anywhere, especially not by yourself, and _especially_ not with any Class Black members. Just lock yourself into this room and booby trap the door. I can show you how to do it, so you'll have warning if anyone tries to get in."

Haru frowned unhappily. "Haru doesn't want to live like that."

"Then you might not get the choice to live at all."

"Haru won't die. Neither will Tokaku-san. You'll see."

"That's just wishful thinking," Tokaku said, her eyes skittering away nervously from the soft smile Haru was giving her, and whatever it might mean.

"I don't want people dying for me. I don't want you dying for me. Haru wants to live and be friends with everyone."

"How can you possibly believe that's going to happen?" Tokaku heard the frustration creeping into her own voice. It drove her to distraction that Haru could persist in thinking such patently untrue things.

"It will happen."

"You're foolish."

"We survived today, right?"

"There's still tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that."

"Tokaku-san changed her mind about killing Haru. Some of the others might still do the same."

They wouldn't, Tokaku knew. Assassins weren't sentimental. They didn't have feelings for the targets they killed. They couldn't afford to. Feelings led to disaster. Feelings led to crazy situations like this; an assassin in bed with her target trying to keep her alive.

_Executing mission_ she'd sent to Kaiba when she started protecting Haru, but exactly what mission was she executing here? And whose? Haru's? Her own?

"I won't," Tokaku whispered. "I won't ever hurt you. I won't let anyone touch you."

Protecting life was foreign to her. It was the opposite of everything she'd been trained to do. So why was it that killing this one cheerful girl was so unthinkable to her? Why did the thought of her death fill her with grief and anguish; she, who had hardly felt anything for years?

It was a riddle whose answer was terrifyingly obvious.

She remembered the soft press of lips against her own in a watery blue world and then wished she hadn't. There was no kiss of life that could save her.

_I should have died in that cage today_, she thought. _Better to die in a cage than to live in one and never escape_.

"Tokaku has a nice scent," Haru murmured, her eyes falling closed again. "Like a forest. I can smell trees and earth and the wind."

"What are you saying? No assassin has a scent like that. It's impossible."

"You are Haru's guardian, not an assassin. An assassin would not protect Haru, right?"

"I don't know," said Tokaku. "I don't know what I am anymore."

The desperate questioning of her own nature received no reply. Haru had already fallen asleep trustingly in her arms, which, if Tokaku had stopped and thought about it, would have provided a more thorough answer to her uncertainties than any words could.

* * *

><p>In the sterile heart of the hive, Yuri Meichi observed all that happened with great interest via the hidden camera that Tokaku had missed in the bedroom.<p>

"Haru has amazing power," she said approvingly. "To make even an Azuma forget what she is. Killing is in the lineage of that girl's blood, just as it is in yours."

She glanced sidelong at the sharp-toothed assassin who stood silently by her chair.

Nio made a face. "Yuri-sama, I wish you wouldn't watch them. I'll have nightmares from all that sweet talk."

The Chairperson chuckled. "There's a lesson to be learned from all this, Nio. What do you think it is?"

"Hmm. Assassins should not go to bed with their targets!" Nio guessed.

"Wrong," said Yuri, turning back to the monitor. "The lesson is that everybody wants to love someone. It's a natural human impulse. But for an assassin, love is the most unaffordable emotion of all. Every time an assassin kills, even if it's for the things she loves, they end up slipping further and further away from her. Will Tokaku destroy her own innocence, for the sake of this girl? Will she do it because she loves her, or because she hates her? Or to prove to herself what her true feelings are?" The Chairperson laughed, an unpleasant sound. "Ah, I do so love the years when we have a Class Black. They're always so entertaining!"

Not knowing they were being watched, Haru and Tokaku slept on, holding each other in the blue shadows of night.


	6. The World is Full of Questions

**The World is Full of Questions**

That's the answer Tokaku should have sent to the very first riddle Kaiba gave her. The world is full of questions that have no answers at all.

She looked again at the advance notice sitting so snug and sinister in her drawer, the one she had taken from the Orientation Room not long before.

_I tore it up_, she thought._ I tore it up, and now it's back again. Maybe there is no escape after all._

Just for a while there, she had almost begun to believe. Stupid, impossible things; a way out of her cage as easy as Haru breathing life into her underwater. A future in which she didn't have someone's blood on her hands.

Only everything Haru breathed into her had quite possibly been a lie; nothing more than her own desperate manipulation to stay alive. She'd never been as innocent as Tokaku thought. She'd never been the answer to anything, just another tormenting question to drive her mad.

_The only way for proving everything…_

The only way. Her filthy assassin's way. The path her footsteps had been following all along, whether she knew it or not. Here she was at her final battle; a battle against her own cruel nature and already she had cast her humanity aside.

The sword gleamed in her hand, an unforgiving instrument of justice.

_Am I going to kill her, or am I going to save her?_

The world, Tokaku thought grimly, is full of questions.


	7. First Time

**First Time**

It's after the first time that Tokaku finally lets herself say it, whispering the words into Haru's loose red hair.

"I love you."

She's been agonising about this for weeks, wondering how she was ever going to get the words out, how she could trust herself enough to promise something so impossibly big. It's worse because of how patient Haru always is with her, coaxing her along little by little as they embark on this normal life that is as alien to Tokaku as a childhood spent learning to kill is to most people.

But in the end, her heart is too full not to say it. Full the way her arms are full of Haru; full the way her body was with pleasure just moments ago.

She tests the words silently on her lips before she speaks them, hesitant, half expecting to choke or stumble. Haru has already said this to her so many times; she deserves to hear it at least once from the far from adequate ex-assassin she has chosen to share her life with. Deserves to feel the way Tokaku feels when Haru says it to her, full of warmth and happiness and wonder that somehow they both ended up escaping their Hellish destinies of death.

Tokaku doesn't choke, and she doesn't stumble. Haru stiffens for a moment when she hears the whispered avowal, breath catching, then she sighs and leans into Tokaku even further, _nuzzling_ her of all things, and it seems so unheard of to nuzzle an Azuma that Tokaku wonders whether there might not be a written rule somewhere forbidding the practice, but she is long past caring about such proprieties.

"I love you too, Tokaku."

Of course Haru says it back to her, squeezing Tokaku just a little, bare flesh brushing against her own. She is generous, far too generous, when it comes to expressing the feelings she shouldn't even have.

They lie in silence for quite a while, in the comforting dark where all of this is slightly more manageable than it might otherwise be, and Tokaku thinks about things she hasn't ever spoken of, beginning to realise that what she's considered numbness all these years might actually have been pain she was too afraid to feel.

"You know," she says, closing her eyes, because that's the only way she can talk about this, even in the dark, "my mother never wanted me to be an assassin. It was her dying wish that my aunt take me away with her to live a normal life, and she tried. She tried."

Her voice almost breaks and she has to stop. Tokaku knows Haru is listening, but the red haired girl doesn't speak, just waits until Tokaku drags in a tearing breath and carries on.

"That's probably why I always thought of love as being an unforgiving force, delivered at the point of a sword. Because that's how my grandmother killed my aunt for trying to take me away. It was her duty, to protect the family. To secure my future as the heir of the Azuma clan. She told me she did it out of love." Tokaku's voice is bitter as winter snows.

"And because she won, I thought she must have been right about me. That I didn't deserve a life outside the bounds of that world. That there was nothing else to me but killing. I'd always thought that if I'd been worthy of it, I would have been saved. But there was no one else left who cared enough to save me, and I lived in the dark for a very long time."

Tokaku tightens her arms around Haru's waist. "Until I met you. You showed me the world of the sun that I thought was just a myth; the world that they'd wanted me to have so long ago. I still don't know what I've done to be able to live here with you. The very first time I was tested I broke and turned into my grandmother. I tried to kill you."

Saying this in the aftermath of their bodies being tangled together in love is so incongruent it hurts. What they've just shared clashes too much with Tokaku's memory of her fury and despair, her sudden inability to trust anything around her but the familiar comfort of cold steel in her hand.

She recalls sitting in the empty dorm room with shards of pain piercing her heart as it became impossible not to remember that she was an assassin and had been all along; that she'd never escaped from her destiny, never escaped from the job she had come here to do.

Kill the girl she'd been protecting all this time.

How all it had taken was a single doubt for her to turn her back on everything Haru had given her.

"The path you chose to get here wasn't the one I wanted," Haru whispers, gliding a hand across Tokaku's cheek. "But would you have made it any other way? Would you still be running from me and hating me if you hadn't done what you did?"

Tokaku releases a shuddering breath, part horror for the past and part disbelieving thanks for the feel of Haru's hands in the present. "The path I chose showed me that I was on the wrong path. But I didn't realise until I thought it was already too late."

"It's never too late, as long as you're alive." There's the glimmer of a smile in Haru's reply. "And we're both alive, Tokaku. We both made it. Besides, I knew all along you might die protecting me, and I didn't even trust you enough to tell you the truth. Of course you were angry. Of course you turned back to the only certainties you knew. Yuri and the others knew you would. They had to have Class Black play out to the bitter end."

She moves slightly, her hair tickling Tokaku's collarbone. "I know you're never going to do something like that again. So what would be served by me rejecting you? What good would it do for me to be lying here alone thinking about you and telling myself I could never touch you? What good would it do for you to be drawn back into your old world because you had nowhere else to go? Isn't this the better ending? The one where we both get to be happy? The one where I can hear you say that you love me?"

"Yes, it's better," Tokaku has to agree, her whisper fervent as a convert's. She can't wish for anything but this with Haru in her arms, doesn't want to imagine any future for herself in which she can never express her feelings to Haru again.

"About your family…It's awful, too awful that you had to go through that. But at least you found your way out, eventually. At least you know now there's more."

Haru's lips brush across hers in a soft kiss, and this, this is what Tokaku has been searching for without knowing it through all the miserable struggles of her existence. Something to make heart keep beating. A reason for her life.

Tokaku has been wrong about love. It isn't her grandmother's vengeance, and it never abandoned her when her aunt and mother died. Love has been waiting inside her all this time; the answer she's been looking for.


End file.
